Top all-time · #11043
Matt Leifer
Personal blog · mattleifer.infosciencephilosophy
Matt Leifer's personal blog at mattleifer.info covers science and philosophy. Since 2011, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 8 times, most often “Can the quantum state be interpreted statistically?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-03-11, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog's 2011 post on whether the quantum state can be ontic, which explains the PBR paper on the reality of the wave function. Commenters call it an expert explanation.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Mathematics -- Physics -- Quantum Theory
Most-linked posts?
- Can the quantum state be interpreted statistically?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2011-11-21
What Hacker News says?
Proponents of epistemic approach do not think so. > their result does not rule out any position that is seriously held by any researchers in quantum foundations. http://mattleifer.info/2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-i...
Comment linking /2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-interpreted-statistically/
on “Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference”Submitted Can the quantum state be interpreted statistically? as a story · 41 points
HN discussionVery good explanation from an expert in the field: http://mattleifer.info/2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-i...
Comment linking /2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-interpreted-statistically/
on “Quantum theorem shakes foundations”Good article on the original PBR paper: http://mattleifer.info/2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-i...
Comment linking /2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-interpreted-statistically/
on “A wave of experiments is probing the root of quantum weirdness”Warning: you shouldn't be too quick to extrapolate anything about general attitudes in quantum foundations towards various interpretations from this "snapshot" poll. There exist at least two other polls I know of with very different results[0,1]. Interesting quote from one of the abstracts: > the results do strongly suggest several interesting cultural facts -- for example, that there exist, within the broad field o…
Comment linking /tag/survey/
on “Best attempts so far to skin Schrödinger’s cat (2016)”This is a very unimpressive article. I am surprised to see Colin link to it. In particular, while the paper the article references in a short part between the history lesson is important, it does not actually change things much. It rules out those who think that the wave function is a distribution over an underlying reality but it does not affect those who believe that there is no hidden reality. So called Quantum B…
Comment linking /2012/02/26/quantum-times-article-on-the-pbr-theorem/
on “Ghosts in the atom: The wave in QM may be real after all.”The original paper http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3328 was previously discussed on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3260445 and Matt Leifer's blog post http://mattleifer.info/2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-i... is the best explanation out there of all this. The short answer is that the authors have ruled out an interpretation of quantum mechanics which very few experts believed in to begin with. Nevertheless,…
Comment linking /2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-interpreted-statistically/
on “The insanely weird quantum wave function might be "real" after all”
